Wednesday, March 7, 2018

His name was Zeus, and he was a black lab.He turned 15 on Valentine’s Day.In his last year, he suffered a degenerative
hip, atrophied muscles of his hindquarters, a tumor on his left flank the size
of a softball, and probably cancer. He
was deaf and nearly blind.If he laid
down on a hardwood or linoleum floor, we had to lift him so he could regain his
footing.My heart broke every time I
watched the old guy hobble to his food or water bowls, and I winced each time he
moaned or cried.So it was time to end
it, and today was that day.

With help from my son, we lifted him into the back of the
car, and I drove to the vets alone.My
wife offered to come, but I knew she really couldn’t bear it, and it would be
better for me if I didn’t have to watch her suffer on the trip home.I learned long ago that I prefer to grieve
alone, although when I returned home, my wife and I had our sorrowful moments
over Zeus.

Soon after Zeus and I entered the patient room, a tech came
in with paper work and said cheerily: “So, this is Stormy?”I told her no, this is Zeus.“Oh.Sorry”.Geesh lady, let’s not put
Stormy down and then return to clip Zeus’s nails.After the vet administered the drug, he was
gone in 10 seconds. He was lying on the
floor and he put his head slowly down as the drug coursed through his body, and
he then looked exactly like he did when he was sleeping on the floor at
home.Quiet, peaceful, uneventful. They left me alone with him for a few minutes
while I said my feeble goodbye to a dog who couldn’t even hear me when he was
alive.But I had to say something.I guess we all do.

I have thought a lot about dogs over the past few years. To be honest, most of the time I secretly object
to the entire phenomenon of dogs and cats as pets (see my earlier blog about
cats as killers of wildlife).The way
most people pamper their pets actually disgusts me.In decades past, when I was a child, dogs
were rarely kept in their owners’ houses; they were considered too dirty.We kept them in dog houses outside.Remember those?For better or worse, we have come a long
way.And then there is this.In 2016, Americans spent $62 billion on these
family pets!$62 billion to purchase
them, and for food, toys, collars, leashes, grooming, flea and tick medicine,
occasional kenneling and, of course, the never-ending vet bills.As I write this, teachers in West Virginia
are on strike for higher pay and better benefits, but they are meeting voluntarily
every day to pack lunches for their poor, hungry students who are now missing
that essential meal because their school is closed.What a pathetic state of affairs. No civilized country should be able to report
such a fact.So I think of what $62
billion could do to address both of those problems, and I lament.But, of course, money is never fungible in
that way.

We all love our pets, and I loved Zeus.On the other hand, I was often impatient with
him and angry when he relieved himself in the house, or woke us up in the
middle of the night, or had to be let out AGAIN, or wouldn’t come when I called
to him, or when I tripped over him lying on the floor when I made that
important first cup of morning Joe, or when my wife and I decided not to travel
because of “the dog”.And the hair.Blackish hair—everywhere, all the time.

But now, I already miss hearing his toe nails
clicking down the hallway, the feel of his velvet ears, and the look of those
eyes, which were huge for a lab, when he tried to make sense of my human gibberish.One minute I loved him, and the next minute his
existence irritated me. What a confounded and complicated set of emotions come
with pet territory.I have concluded
that I love dogs, but dislike being a dog owner.

Will I ever get another dog?No.I’ve had dogs since I was
about five years old, probably eight or nine. I’ve done my time.I don’t want another dog for all the reasons of
inconvenience and financial costs that I’ve mentioned already.But the main reason I will never have another
dog is that I can not bear to lose a friend after they have gotten into your
heart and become a part of your soul.Why
invite that kind of sadness voluntarily into our lives when there is sadness in
abundance already?I simply can’t do it
again.

Friday, December 30, 2016

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Occasional Holiday Letter #6 from DrTom and Robin for 2017!

Friends, enemies, even Republicans:

You will have to excuse this group letter, but it is the only way to
go. If I were to send each of my FB friends a letter in the mail, it
would cost about $650 in postage, and no holiday letter is worth that
much. And I hate licking stamps, and I don’t have most of your
addresses, and my postman would start spitting in our mailbox.
Actually, I think he does that already, because the mailbox door is
difficult to open and I refuse to replace it. I can’t think of any
other way that the inside of that box could get so moist and putrid.

Most of us are utterly bored when we get one of those family-oriented
letters. So let’s dispense with that part. Our kids are fine, our
grandkids are even finer, we are fine, the chickens are fine, but our
black lab, Zeus, is old and ailing. There, you are all caught up.

So, what a year, huh? You just knew that I wouldn’t be able to refrain
from mentioning THAT man. But one interesting thing has evolved from
the existence of this bizarre person. I now have a new item on my
“bucket list”. I hope, somehow, to be included in one of the Donalds’
middle-of-the-night tweets about how much he hates me, and how I am
going down, and how old and decrepit I look, and how my wife will never
want to have sex with me again. I’m not yet sure how to arouse enough
ire in him for me to make his tweet list, but I’m working on it. One
idea is this: he can’t seem to get any musician to perform at his
inauguration ball; they all refuse. So, eventually, my name will come
up as one who plays a mean conga drum. And when he asks me to perform
on that important day (and you know where this is going), I will
haughtily refuse, which will piss him off to no end, and he will tweet
about it at 3am that night while sitting on the toilet. Bucket
list—check!

But the good news this week was the annual letter
that Robin and I received from the Social Security Administration that
tells us how much of a raise we will receive beginning in January.
Raises for American recipients will be 0.3% in 2017. That’s
right----3/10%, or about 1/3 of a percent raise. In my case, that
amounts to an increase of $4.50 per month, about the cost of a LARGE
bottle of ketchup. So look out homemade french fries in 2017, cause I
am going to slather you in that red stuff like you have never been
slathered before. And every time I do that, I will remember to thank
the SS system for this dietary enhancement. Robin and I have been
paying happily into the social security system for 53 years, and we are
still paying into it. This raise is more than we deserve, and I
sincerely hope that the fiscal conservatives in Congress will keep a
tight rein on these increases; we must not let these raises get out of
hand. A raise of 0.2% would have been sufficient, more than enough for a
SMALL bottle of ketchup.

And what about this coming year? I’m
told that we should all be full of hope, and good cheer, and optimism.
After all, that is what humans do. We always hope for something more,
for a better future, a brighter tomorrow. Maybe that brighter tomorrow
is not going to happen in the location where we reside now. So these
past few weeks, I have been researching what life would be like as a
retiree living, at least part of the year, in Italy, Spain, Uruguay, and
Chile (look out Silvas of Valparaiso). Costa Rica is always on the
table, but we have been there, done that. It all sounds doable and
encouraging. Good wine, good food, Cuban cigars, the music we like,
mountains (except Uruguay), coasts, culture, interesting history, and
that latino zest for life. Let’s at least stick a toe in the water.
The worst that could happen is that the toe gets bitten off, but that
leaves nine (see how this optimism thing works?). And with the recent
social security increase, finances shouldn’t be a problem at all.

By the way, a couple of months ago I eliminated about 500 FB friends.
These were people who I didn’t know at all, or they seemed to have no
presence on FB any longer, or they were too right-wing for me to bear.
Most of these were people I befriended years ago when I was truly a
Facebook slut. Therefore, those of you who remain can consider
yourselves the cream of the crop. Congratulations. Not sure how many
deleted me for being obnoxious, too opinionated, or too far left, but it
all works out.

Anyhow, Happy Holidays and have a great 2017. No
need to send gifts to Robin and me this year (unless you really, really
want to). Your clever comments on FB are all we need. And you old
people, enjoy that extra ketchup!

Friday, March 4, 2016

I had three excellent English teachers in high school in the
early 1960s, but Mr. Robinson, during my senior year, was my favorite.He was a middle-aged man with whitish hair, bespectacled,
soft-spoken, and the kind of guy who exuded mild manners with every word.He had a gentle smile that he sported often,
never a belly laugh, and an acceptable sense of humor.He always wore a sport jacket; I remember it
as gray or brown tweed.He was the
personification of what we all envision when we think of a college English professor
at an Ivy League school.

That year in English, we mostly read great books and
practiced our writing skills.Unlike his
usual outward demeanor, Mr. Robinson was a ruthless editor, which we thought
was somewhat unfair at the time.But he
knew that freshman English in college was not a cake walk in those days, and
that most of us would be facing that trial in only a few months.For example, I was bound for Ohio State that
fall, and a high percentage of entering students got Ds or Fs in freshmen
English on a regular basis; about a third of OSU frosh flunked out of school
during their first year.So we wrote,
and Mr. Robinson edited, and we rewrote, and he re-edited, and slowly but
surely most of us got better and better at composing a readable, logical piece.

That fall semester in college, I found out exactly what Mr.
Robinson had been trying to get us to understand.No matter how hard I tried, it was nearly
impossible to get higher than a C on an English composition.Those who had not had Mr. Robinson seemed to
do even worse. But eventually, my scores, and presumably my writing skills,
improved and I survived that academic year more or less unscathed, in no small
way due to my mentor’s efforts the year before.

Perhaps the most vivid academic memory of that class was
reading and discussing Dickens’ classic A
Tale of Two Cities.How can anyone
who has ever read that book not recall at least parts of the first and last
sentences of that wonderful story.“It
was the best of times, it was the worst of times……..” and “It is a far, far
better thing that I do, than I have ever done…..”Oh, to be able to write a book, or an essay, or even a paragraph of
prose with elements that have resounded through the ages like that.Those words are certainly famous and timeless
in their own right, and millions of people around the world are familiar with
them.But would they have left their
indelible imprint on my soul if it had not been for Mr. Robinson’s ability to
bring out the richness of their import?That is what a great teacher can do, and it is a wonderful thing.

I have not reread that classic since I studied it in high school
all those years ago.But from time to
time I think about that story, its characters and the beautiful expression of their
powerful emotions through Dicken’s talented hand.And then today, while I was a substitute
teacher in a high school class, I realized that a copy of that gem was sitting
on the desk at which I was sitting.I
stared at it for a long moment, not quite sure what I should do.But I picked it up, and I read that
incredible first sentence (which was much longer than I remembered).And then I turned to the final page with all
its sadness and I read Dickens’ last sentence. The memories of sitting in my high
school English class only a few seats from Mr. Robinson’s desk, and waiting
with anticipation for his clever way of getting us to dig for the depth of
meaning that cemented that book forever in my mind, poured over me.

And I sat there, looking out over this class of 20 or so
students, and I felt just like I
remember Mr. Robinson looking.We have all experienced something like
that.I have white hair, I’m sitting at
a desk staring pensively at all those young minds with a curious smile on my
face, and I’m feeling how important it is to open the minds of those teenagers,
to make them feel something, to make them remember something beautiful about
the great literature of the past.For
that fleeting moment, I WAS Mr. Robinson.

I have often wondered whatever happened to Mr. Robinson, but
I’m sure he passed a long time ago.After all, he was my teacher more than 50 years ago.A Tale
of Two Cities was published in 1859 (the same year that Darwin published Origin of Species), and it was about 100 hundred years old
when I first read it.Another half
century has passed, and students are still asked to read it.How incredible!Another half century, and I’m hoping there
are still Mr. Robinsons out there.Thousands of them, tens of thousands of them, because the world needs
them—every last one.

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About DrTom

I was a professor at Cornell University, where I worked for almost 30 years in the Dept. of Natural Resources, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. In the early 1980s, students began calling me DrTom, so I have revived that name here.
I have been married to my college sweetheart for 45 years. We have three adult children and three grandchildren. In November 2008, I retired to our rural property in the Finger Lakes region of upstate NY where Robin and I live with our black lab Zeus. I enjoy watching organisms and their behavior on my land, especially while sipping a scotch and smoking a cigar. My writing contains the observations and musings of a guy who thinks that life is pretty interesting and extremely humorous. Let's have some fun.